Prodigal son returns home

Saturday

May 18, 2013 at 10:00 PMMay 18, 2013 at 10:25 PM

By Paula J. Owen TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

When acclaimed documentary filmmaker John M. Antonelli first heard Fitchburg State University was awarding him an honorary doctorate degree at the school’s 117th Commencement exercises this weekend, he said he was surprised, but felt gratified at the same time.

As a student journalist at FSU more than four decades ago, Mr. Antonelli made national headlines in a precedent-setting free speech lawsuit that pitted students against administration.

In September 1969, as The Cycle’s editor, Mr. Antonelli and his “cohorts” — working out of a home on Myrtle Avenue that housed the student-run newspaper — sought to publish an explicit excerpt from Black Panthers’ founder Eldridge Cleaver’s novella The Black Moochie.

It was a volatile time in American politics, with the Vietnam War raging and the civil rights movement in full swing, Mr. Antonelli said. Then-FSU president James J. Hammond Jr. refused to allow The Cycle to publish Mr. Cleaver’s piece, blocking all funds for its printing and calling the Cleaver piece obscene.

Mr. Hammond also sought to have any content in the campus paper first reviewed by a faculty advisory committee.

So the school paper took Mr. Hammond to federal court, and won.

In the now famous ruling in the Antonelli v. Hammond case dated Feb. 5, 1970, U.S. District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity said Mr. Hammond’s efforts to censor the student paper constituted a direct previous restraint of expression.

Mr. Antonelli said he learned a lot during that period, but it was not without sacrifice. After the ordeal, he said he felt unwelcomed at the college by not only the administration but also some students, and left to pursue filmmaking at University of California at Los Angeles.

Since then, as a producer-director-writer, he has overseen celebrated projects including his 2010 documentary “Sam Cooke: Crossing Over,” which was broadcast on PBS’ “American Masters” series and nominated for a prime-time Emmy Award for outstanding nonfiction series.

His recently completed documentary, “Unfair Game: The Politics of Poaching,” will soon make the film festival circuit. In the past year, his documentary work has taken him to Egypt, Serbia, South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, West Timor, Iraq and Hawaii.

He has also written, produced and directed an ongoing series of 30-minute films about “The New Environmentalists,” narrated by Robert Redford. The environmental series has screened at film festivals around the world and netted regional Emmy Awards for outstanding public service programming.

And, his groundbreaking 1986 docudrama, “Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in the documentary competition. It was broadcast on PBS, A&E and The Learning Channel, as well as numerous major international markets, and was just re-released by Kultur Films International.

But, despite his success, Mr. Antonelli never returned to FSU, always having the feeling he would not be welcome.

Until 2011, when he was invited as guest panelist at FSU’s Constitution Day events.

He said he wasn’t sure what to expect from students or the administration during that first visit.

“When I first heard they were inviting me back, at first I really and truly couldn’t believe it,” he said, while sitting on one of the couches in the newly renovated Hammond campus center, named in honor of his nemesis from so many years ago. “I thought someone in the administration would stop and think twice about it and think it was a bad idea. We were so at odds with the administration. Even though it was 40 years ago, it seemed impossible that the current administration was so welcoming about me coming back and talking about how I took the college to court and won.”

During that first visit, he was reunited with college friends and was met with curiosity by current students, he said.

“It was a big surprise how eager the current student body was, and curious to hear our story,” he said. “We were sitting in the building named after Hammond who we took to federal court, talking about the court case. Everyone in the school seemed to relish the story.”

Since then, he has visited the school a few times, he said, and thought about the profound impact attended attending FSU has had on him.

“I grew up Catholic and went to Catholic school my whole life,” he said. “There is not that much freedom of expression in Catholic school. It is not at all a place where you’re encouraged to express thoughts and feelings about controversial subjects. That was hard for a kid growing up in the 60s with rock ’n’ roll and freedom of speech.”

He said he didn’t have the option of finding his own core values and expressing them while attending private, parochial schools. Then, he came to Fitchburg.

“Fitchburg State was a platform for me to exercise my intellectual, philosophical muscles that I didn’t get to in Catholic school,” he said. “Then, I was met with resistance to that with Hammond and the administration. Strangely, that resistance made them become deeply ingrained in me. I felt directly opposed with what I was trying to do with the newspaper. That opposition was so perfect and direct, it forced me to ask myself, `Why does this matter to me?’, `How much does this matter to me?’ and, `What am I willing to do about it?”’

Those questions he continues to ask himself in life, he said.

A lot of things contributed to his success as a filmmaker, he said, including making the college newspaper and collaborating with his friends who were writers, graphic artists and photographers.

“That whole feeling of camaraderie and collaboration was something I took with me and brought to my filmmaking work,” he said. “Working on productions was already familiar to me — to share in the creative process and find ways to deliver the message.”

As far as the court case itself — it also taught him valuable lessons.

“If you have a belief in something and it really matters to you and you stay with it and your convictions, almost always there is a positive resolution for you,” he said.